Inflation Reduction Act: 8/12/22 - $740B Bill PASSES, Biden signs it into law!
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Domingo Halliburton
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Mods pinning their own threads. I see how it is. 
$3.5T or bust? Sanders goes all-out to protect Dems’ social spending plans
“The truth is we need more,” the Vermont senator said in an interview, adding this is “the minimum of what we should be spending.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer walk out of a budget resolution meeting. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
By BURGESS EVERETT
08/26/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Bernie Sanders is shifting into a new phase of his legacy-defining work on Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending plan: Protecting it from members of his own party and selling it to the public.
Sanders understands that there will be changes to his vision given the party’s slim majorities in each chamber, now that the blueprint is approved. But as Senate moderates propose chipping away at the $3.5 trillion price tag, he’s in no mood to haggle on the top line number.
“I already negotiated. The truth is we need more,” Sanders said in an interview on Wednesday, ahead of a swing into conservative parts of the Midwest to stump for his transformative policy blueprint. “The needs are there. This is, in my view, the minimum of what we should be spending.”
The longtime progressive advocate is pursuing his own two-track strategy as his party seeks to pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a Democratic-only spending bill this fall and send them to President Joe Biden’s desk. Sanders is trying to sell Republican voters on Democrats’ agenda in hopes of increasing popular support for the historic spending push while also coaxing his own moderate Democratic colleagues to support one of the largest federal expansions of benefit programs ever.
It’s a tricky balancing act for what’s shaping up to be a pivotal few weeks for Sanders, a two-time presidential candidate who Republicans like to assert is essentially running the party’s policy operation. Yet Sanders is eager to meet Republicans where they are, literally.
The Vermont senator is barnstorming conservative Iowa and Indiana this weekend to sell Democrats’ sweeping visions of hiking taxes on the wealthy and corporations while expanding health care coverage, taking climate action and increasing access to education. He’s also expected to host an event in Michigan with progressive Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
“I understand that budget chairpersons, historically, have done their work within the Beltway in D.C. I think really the function of a budget chairman is to get out among the people,” Sanders said. “What we are proposing in this budget is going to be enormously popular."
Yet as he seeks to increase support among working class Republicans across the country, Sanders also must ensure he can keep his fellow 49 Democratic Caucus members on board in D.C. It’s part of an inside-outside game Sanders has worked on for years — in part with his fellow Brooklynite-turned-majority leader.
“He’s great at coming up with ideas and getting a movement behind it, but now he's proven to be a really good legislator as well,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We've worked so closely together, we probably talk four or five times a day.”
Sanders said if he could, he would travel to all 50 states this fall to make his case. And he did not rule out West Virginia and Arizona, home to the Senate’s two most conservative Democrats.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are the most obvious obstacles to implementing Sanders’s agenda, with Sinema reiterating her opposition to a $3.5 trillion spending bill earlier this week. Though Sanders wrote the budget and is one of the most public faces of both the spending bill and the effort to increase taxes on the wealthy, he said the massive spending bill will pass because most of the bill is based on Biden’s jobs and family plans.
Sanders and most Democrats believe the $3.5 trillion number is indispensable because, combined with the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, it essentially implements all of Biden and Sanders’ priorities, including Medicare expansion and continuing popular child tax credits. But because of Sinema’s entrenched position, Manchin’s worries about inflation and softer dissent among a few other centrists, some Democrats are less sure their $3.5 trillion plan can survive both chambers’ reed-thin majorities intact.
“Kyrsten and Joe get the most attention, but they’re not alone in wanting that number to be lower,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “My hope is that we're not making decisions based on an arbitrary number. That we're looking at the programs we need to fund and the programs that we don't need to fund.”
To Sanders, there’s nothing that can be put on the chopping block, and he declined to entertain how he'd proceed if programs are cut. He said “every single thing” in the plan is vital, previewing an argument he will make at town halls in Indiana and Iowa this week. He said he expects to see a significant percentage of GOP voters support his proposal’s specifics, ranging from the $300 monthly child tax credit to universal pre-K to Medicare benefit expansion.
He also said that if Democrats can follow through on their plan, it will increase their chances in what’s shaping up to be an increasingly dicey midterm election.
“Democrats have a very slim majority in the House. We have no majority in the Senate. That’s it. It is 50/50,” Sanders said. “Trust me, there are a lot of differences in the Senate among the Democrats. But at the end of the day, every Democrat understands that it is terribly important that we support the president's agenda. And most of these ideas came from the White House.”
Republicans “understand that what we're doing is enormously popular, that the American people are sick and tired of the government working overtime for the wealthy and the powerful.” Sanders said. “The contrast is pretty clear. And we're gonna win that.”
In a rare bit of bipartisan agreement, Republicans are eager for the debate with Sanders. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it on Fox News on Tuesday: “Bernie Sanders may have lost the nomination but he won the war in the Democratic Party.”
“Having Socialist Bernie Sanders at the wheel of the Democrats’ entire domestic agenda is a gift to Senate Republican campaigns everywhere,” said Katharine Cooksey, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm.
The partisan contrast will be stark in the coming days. After 19 Senate Republicans supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill, all 50 will end up voting against the reconciliation bill.
That leaves any single Democratic senator with veto power over the whole plan, a dynamic that played out in March when Manchin sought to team up with Republicans to narrow unemployment benefits on Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue bill. Yet no Democrat ever seriously threatened to tank that effort, and no one is signaling they’d take down Democrats’ social spending bill.
What’s more, Sanders has shown flexibility in recent weeks: His initial budget proposal was $6 trillion, but after haggling with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) he came down to $3.5 trillion. And after criticizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill and threatening to vote against it, he supported it to keep Democrats’ fragile coalition moving forward.
At the moment, Sanders says the $3.5 trillion top line is “non-negotiable.” But his ability to work within his caucus’s confines makes Sanders more confident the bill will pass in the end after an intense fall work period.
“There are nuances and differences. I hear them as the Budget Committee Chairman. Every day this one is worried about this, there's one who wants more on public transit,” Sanders said. But “every member of the caucus understands that … this is transformative for the American people, it is the right thing to do. And it is politically popular.”
“The truth is we need more,” the Vermont senator said in an interview, adding this is “the minimum of what we should be spending.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer walk out of a budget resolution meeting. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
By BURGESS EVERETT
08/26/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Bernie Sanders is shifting into a new phase of his legacy-defining work on Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending plan: Protecting it from members of his own party and selling it to the public.
Sanders understands that there will be changes to his vision given the party’s slim majorities in each chamber, now that the blueprint is approved. But as Senate moderates propose chipping away at the $3.5 trillion price tag, he’s in no mood to haggle on the top line number.
“I already negotiated. The truth is we need more,” Sanders said in an interview on Wednesday, ahead of a swing into conservative parts of the Midwest to stump for his transformative policy blueprint. “The needs are there. This is, in my view, the minimum of what we should be spending.”
The longtime progressive advocate is pursuing his own two-track strategy as his party seeks to pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a Democratic-only spending bill this fall and send them to President Joe Biden’s desk. Sanders is trying to sell Republican voters on Democrats’ agenda in hopes of increasing popular support for the historic spending push while also coaxing his own moderate Democratic colleagues to support one of the largest federal expansions of benefit programs ever.
It’s a tricky balancing act for what’s shaping up to be a pivotal few weeks for Sanders, a two-time presidential candidate who Republicans like to assert is essentially running the party’s policy operation. Yet Sanders is eager to meet Republicans where they are, literally.
The Vermont senator is barnstorming conservative Iowa and Indiana this weekend to sell Democrats’ sweeping visions of hiking taxes on the wealthy and corporations while expanding health care coverage, taking climate action and increasing access to education. He’s also expected to host an event in Michigan with progressive Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
“I understand that budget chairpersons, historically, have done their work within the Beltway in D.C. I think really the function of a budget chairman is to get out among the people,” Sanders said. “What we are proposing in this budget is going to be enormously popular."
Yet as he seeks to increase support among working class Republicans across the country, Sanders also must ensure he can keep his fellow 49 Democratic Caucus members on board in D.C. It’s part of an inside-outside game Sanders has worked on for years — in part with his fellow Brooklynite-turned-majority leader.
“He’s great at coming up with ideas and getting a movement behind it, but now he's proven to be a really good legislator as well,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We've worked so closely together, we probably talk four or five times a day.”
Sanders said if he could, he would travel to all 50 states this fall to make his case. And he did not rule out West Virginia and Arizona, home to the Senate’s two most conservative Democrats.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are the most obvious obstacles to implementing Sanders’s agenda, with Sinema reiterating her opposition to a $3.5 trillion spending bill earlier this week. Though Sanders wrote the budget and is one of the most public faces of both the spending bill and the effort to increase taxes on the wealthy, he said the massive spending bill will pass because most of the bill is based on Biden’s jobs and family plans.
Sanders and most Democrats believe the $3.5 trillion number is indispensable because, combined with the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, it essentially implements all of Biden and Sanders’ priorities, including Medicare expansion and continuing popular child tax credits. But because of Sinema’s entrenched position, Manchin’s worries about inflation and softer dissent among a few other centrists, some Democrats are less sure their $3.5 trillion plan can survive both chambers’ reed-thin majorities intact.
“Kyrsten and Joe get the most attention, but they’re not alone in wanting that number to be lower,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “My hope is that we're not making decisions based on an arbitrary number. That we're looking at the programs we need to fund and the programs that we don't need to fund.”
To Sanders, there’s nothing that can be put on the chopping block, and he declined to entertain how he'd proceed if programs are cut. He said “every single thing” in the plan is vital, previewing an argument he will make at town halls in Indiana and Iowa this week. He said he expects to see a significant percentage of GOP voters support his proposal’s specifics, ranging from the $300 monthly child tax credit to universal pre-K to Medicare benefit expansion.
He also said that if Democrats can follow through on their plan, it will increase their chances in what’s shaping up to be an increasingly dicey midterm election.
“Democrats have a very slim majority in the House. We have no majority in the Senate. That’s it. It is 50/50,” Sanders said. “Trust me, there are a lot of differences in the Senate among the Democrats. But at the end of the day, every Democrat understands that it is terribly important that we support the president's agenda. And most of these ideas came from the White House.”
Republicans “understand that what we're doing is enormously popular, that the American people are sick and tired of the government working overtime for the wealthy and the powerful.” Sanders said. “The contrast is pretty clear. And we're gonna win that.”
In a rare bit of bipartisan agreement, Republicans are eager for the debate with Sanders. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it on Fox News on Tuesday: “Bernie Sanders may have lost the nomination but he won the war in the Democratic Party.”
“Having Socialist Bernie Sanders at the wheel of the Democrats’ entire domestic agenda is a gift to Senate Republican campaigns everywhere,” said Katharine Cooksey, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm.
The partisan contrast will be stark in the coming days. After 19 Senate Republicans supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill, all 50 will end up voting against the reconciliation bill.
That leaves any single Democratic senator with veto power over the whole plan, a dynamic that played out in March when Manchin sought to team up with Republicans to narrow unemployment benefits on Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue bill. Yet no Democrat ever seriously threatened to tank that effort, and no one is signaling they’d take down Democrats’ social spending bill.
What’s more, Sanders has shown flexibility in recent weeks: His initial budget proposal was $6 trillion, but after haggling with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) he came down to $3.5 trillion. And after criticizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill and threatening to vote against it, he supported it to keep Democrats’ fragile coalition moving forward.
At the moment, Sanders says the $3.5 trillion top line is “non-negotiable.” But his ability to work within his caucus’s confines makes Sanders more confident the bill will pass in the end after an intense fall work period.
“There are nuances and differences. I hear them as the Budget Committee Chairman. Every day this one is worried about this, there's one who wants more on public transit,” Sanders said. But “every member of the caucus understands that … this is transformative for the American people, it is the right thing to do. And it is politically popular.”
August 26, 2021
By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick
Good morning. Democrats are turning to the substantive negotiations on Biden’s biggest piece of legislation.
Congressional Democrats are now working to pass President Biden’s domestic agenda.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times
Remaking the economy
President Biden’s domestic agenda seems to be back on track in Congress.
House Democrats resolved a procedural spat this week, and they and Senate Democrats are now turning to the substantive work of putting together a sprawling bill meant to slow climate change, reduce poverty and expand pre-K, college financial aid and Medicare benefits.
The package represents Biden’s most ambitious attempt to reshape the American economy — more so than either the large infrastructure bill also making its way through Congress or the pandemic-relief law that Biden signed in March. The newest bill is likely to be larger and longer lasting, and would affect many aspects of daily life, like education, health care and perhaps even the weather.
But the bill will need to survive a narrow path to pass. No Republicans are likely to support it. Democrats will thus need to maintain the support of all 50 of their senators, including moderates like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and lose no more than three House members.
Today, we offer a guide to the package, which will occupy Congress for much of the next month and maybe beyond. Daily news coverage tends to focus on the procedural back-and-forth, for the simple reason that members of Congress and their aides are also focused on that back-and-forth. We’ll step back to walk you through the plan’s substance, including the contentious parts and the areas where Democrats seem to have a consensus.
Climate
If Biden is going to sign meaningful climate legislation in his first two years — and maybe ever — it will be as part of this bill.
The most significant provision would push the electricity sector to reduce pollution sharply over the next 15 years, which scientists say would have a major impact on carbon emissions. It would do so by subsidizing the use of solar, wind, nuclear and other forms of clean energy while financially penalizing the use of dirty energy like coal, our colleague Lisa Friedman says.
This electricity plan seems likely to be included in a final bill, although Manchin has been vague about his position on it. One unknown: How will it treat natural gas, which is less polluting than coal but more polluting than other energy forms?
The bill is also likely to help families pay for electric cars and energy-efficient homes. Another uncertainty is whether the bill will include something known as a carbon border adjustment tax — a tax on imports whose production was carbon-intensive, like many from China.
Pharmacists fill prescriptions in Rio Grande City, Texas.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times
Health care
“The health care parts of the bill are huge,” our colleague Margot Sanger-Katz says. “There is a lot of health care policy that will have real effects in the lives of people.” And many of the provisions seem likely to survive in the final bill.
Medicare would expand to include dental, hearing and vision coverage for Americans over 65 — an important change, given how many of them struggle to see, hear or chew, Margot says. Medicaid (the federal program focused on low-income people) would expand specifically in the 12 states that have not signed up for the program’s Obamacare expansion. Subsidies for private Obamacare plans would also grow, as would money for home health care, to help more people avoid nursing homes.
Margot says that her reporting on Capitol Hill indicates the biggest uncertainty is how aggressive Congress will be about trying to reduce prescription drug prices. That provision could be very popular — and also reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, freeing up more money for other parts of the bill. “The House is on board for a big drug price approach,” Margot says. “But there is less consensus in the Senate, and, of course, the pharma industry will not go down without a fight.”
Education and families
The plan includes two major expansions of education. It would make prekindergarten available to every 3- and 4-year-old, likely by subsidizing the state programs that more than half of them already attend. The federal government would also try to make community college universal, by expanding financial aid to cover both tuition and living expenses.
Those provisions have the potential to lift upward mobility by reducing educational inequality, experts say. And several other provisions would immediately reduce poverty. They include:
- The extension of a child tax credit in the pandemic relief plan that sends families up to $300 per child each month but is set to expire in December.
- A national program of paid leave — worth up to $4,000 a month — for workers who take time off because they’re ill or caring for a relative.
- Subsidies for child care.
Democrats plan to pay for the bill’s costs by raising taxes on the affluent. The plan includes increases in the corporate tax rate and the top income tax rate, as well as perhaps a new tax on companies’ overseas profits.
The fight over these taxes is likely to be “the most fraught part” of the debate, says our colleague Emily Cochrane, who covers Congress. Manchin, for example, has said both that he favors a smaller corporate tax increase than what Biden and top Democrats have proposed — but also that he wants tax increases to cover the bill’s full costs. That’s one reason the bill could shrink from its current estimated cost of $3.5 trillion.
One other thorny tax issue: Some House members, especially from higher-tax states like New York and New Jersey, want to restore some deductions that largely benefit higher-income households and that Republicans scrapped during the Trump presidency. Why are Democrats pushing for a tax cut that mostly benefits the upper middle class and above? “It is truly an ‘all politics is local’ issue,” The Times’s Jim Tankersley says.
Timeline
House and Senate Democrats will negotiate in the coming weeks. Both chambers could then pass identical bills early this fall and send the legislation to the White House for Biden’s signature — if Democrats can remain united
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Mind you people who have nothing to gain from this defend this bullshyt. It's fukking disgusting
They don't have money and they can't keep power. It's an empty threat. Lol.
Who cares. That isn't a significant portion of the the electorate.
Bernie on the road pitching the plan